Ellis plies her supple storytelling skills and whimsical imagination to delectable effect in this sly, subversive fairy tale. Her drolly entertaining story explores a phenomenon familiar to parents and caregivers: how children excuse their mischief by blaming it on their hands, feet, or mouth, as if those parts had minds of their own – which they do in a way, given kids’ developing motor and social skills.

With mock solemnity, Ellis relates the outrageous behaviour of the queen’s feet. They refuse to be squeezed into proper shoes; instead, they force their owner to don slippers and hiking boots. They go where they want to go and do what they want to do, making the queen climb to the crow’s nest and dance a hornpipe when she is supposed to be christening a ship, and kick a visiting king when he acts like a bully.

The slightly aghast oh-no-not-again tone of Ellis’s narration is perfectly partnered with the impish sass and inspired silliness of Dusan Petricic’s illustrations. Exuberantly capturing just how much fun the queen’s feet are having doing their thing, his illustrations invite a counterpoint chorus in readers of “you go, girl!” The double-page illustrations, awash in a regal watercolour palette, provide an appropriately skewed foot’s-eye perspective on events.

However, eventually the queen’s feet are reined in to restore order to the kingdom. This ode to anarchy then concludes with an unnecessary, oddly adult coda where the queen gets a footrub; it’s a surprising misstep in the otherwise artfully executed minuet danced by Ellis and Petricic.